Kim Day is living proof that Southern Oregon is on the right track when it comes to treating heart attacks.

Day suffered a heart attack last May while working at Lake of the Woods. The innovative treatment plan that helped him survive could soon bring Rogue Valley health-care providers national recognition.

"We have some of the lowest mortality rates (for heart-attack patients) ever recorded," said Dr. Brian Gross, one of the cardiologists who developed the protocol. "And it’s happening right here in little old Medford."

Gross is writing an article about the program’s success and plans to submit it to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The article could be printed as early as May or June if editors choose it for publication.

Gross said mortality from heart attacks has fallen by 50 percent since local hospitals, physicians and ambulance services agreed to transport all heart attack patients to Rogue Valley Medical Center.

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RVMC offers the region’s broadest range of cardiac care. At the hospital, cardiologists treat heart attacks by opening blocked or collapsed arteries with a tiny balloon and inserting a wire mesh to strengthen the blood vessel rather than using drugs to dissolve blood clots inside the artery.

Gross said mortality was just 4.4 percent for 158 patients who were treated under the new protocol during its first year (June 2003 to June 2004). That compares to 8.6 percent mortality at local hospitals in 2001, and 11 percent for hospitals of comparable size across the United States.

"It really is one of the first successful attempts to do what the guys in the ivory towers have been saying we should do," Gross said.

He noted that recent medical research has shown that opening blocked arteries with tiny balloons and wire-mesh stents saves more lives than the traditional strategy of treating blockages with clot- busting drugs.

Research also shows patients get the most benefit from the quickest treatment. The longer the heart muscle is deprived of oxygen, the more muscle fiber dies.

"Time is muscle," Gross said. "The quicker you open the blockage, the more (heart) muscle you save."

Putting all that information to work in the real world, however, has been difficult in many communities, Gross said. In large urban centers there are often too many competing interests (hospitals, cardiologists, ambulance services) to get everyone to agree on a single treatment protocol.

That didn’t happen in Southern Oregon.

Hospitals and ambulance providers agreed to send all heart-attack patients to RVMC. That marked a fundamental departure from the old system, under which heart-attack patients were transported to the nearest hospital for evaluation and preliminary treatment. Some were eventually transported to another hospital for more sophisticated treatment, but the sickest ones died before they could get the treatment they needed.

The plan also required an unusual amount of cooperation between ambulance providers and physicians. Ambulance providers bought sophisticated cardiac monitor/defibrillators that could diagnose a heart attack on the road. Cardiologists agreed that one of their number would muster at RVMC whenever a paramedic reported a heart attack.

Kim Day is alive today because the system worked, Gross said. "An extra 20 minutes on the road and he would have been gone."

Day started having chest pains while working at Lake of the Woods, where he’s caretaker for more than 200 vacation homes. He asked a friend to take him to the hospital, but when they were less than halfway to Medford, Day told his friend to call an ambulance to meet them.

He turned blue and stopped breathing around milepost 25 on Highway 140.

A Mercy Flights ambulance met Day near milepost 9. Paramedics connected him to one of the heart monitor/defibrillators and determined that he had all the classic signs of a heart attack. The paramedics called RVMC and told the hospital to assemble the cardiology team.

Gross and a team of assistants were waiting for Day when the ambulance arrived.

"He looked dead," Gross recalled.

Twenty-one minutes after Day rolled into the hospital, Gross had opened an artery in his leg, inserted a wire in the artery, guided it to Day’s damaged heart and installed a stent to repair the damaged coronary artery.

Day remembers looking down at his body, watching from the ceiling while doctors worked to save his heart — an "out-of-body" experience like those reported by many people who have hovered between life and death. He spent most of the next week in a medically induced coma while his heart gradually regained strength.

Since May, he’s lost 38 pounds. Now he watches his diet and gets regular daily exercise.

"Thank the Lord, or whoever’s watchin’ out for us," he said, "it all worked out."

Meanwhile, word of the program’s success is gradually spreading across the United States. Gross recently fielded a call from a physician at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the most prestigious medical centers in the nation.

"He wanted to know about our program," Gross said. "He wanted to know how we did it."

Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail bkettler@mailtribune.com